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I live about 3 hrs east of Perth, we generally get hot and dry summers and the vast majority of the rain in a reasonably cool winter. From memory I think the South West of WA and around the Adelaide peninsula are the only areas in the country that get more rain in winter.

A weird thing was when last year Perth got that freak afternoon storm with hail that made cars look like they had been attacked by a machine gun we only got a few drops of rain. On Facebook there was a picture of a bloke canoeing down a street in Subiaco in the aftermath, funny stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Western_Australian_storms
 
That storm was intense. I remember buying some chips from the cafe at uni at around 3pm, 45 minutes later the wind was blowing a gale outside my tutorial class and by 4pm it started raining and no joke, the rain was going sideways. Half an hour later my tutorial finished and the court outside the cafe was a complete mess, huge tree branches snapped everywhere, water all over the place.

Driving home was a challenge in itself. The 5 min drive from uni to my place took about at least 10 mins, there were trees snapped along the roads going home. Traffic lights were turned sideways so they were facing in the wrong direction, the wind had put sand all over the roads and there was debris everywhere.

I had to go to my part-time job not long after getting home and the place was flooded, water and debris everywhere. We had about 40mm of rain in 30 mins which was phenomenal. Will never forget that day, cars damaged everywhere from the hail, broken windows, smashed windscreens. Probably the worst storm I've seen in Perth in the 24 years I've lived here. The only other one that compares was when we had 113 mm fall in one day during summer (yes summer!!) when an ex-cyclone travelled down the coast and dumped a heap of rain on perth. I had junior cricket that day as a 13-year old, we got to the ground which was completely flooded, roads were full of water and it was teaming down. Game was called off pretty quickly.
 
Boris said:
Up north they build most things flood and cyclone proof. They've even been given a name to the style the "Queenslander". Most of them are old wood houses with big verandahs and up on stilts. They look flimsy but they withstand just about everything and are very cool in the summer, although incredibly cold in winter (not that that is much of a worry). The new buildings don't seem to withstand as much, though, which makes me wonder why the ignore the fact there are 100 year old houses (a lot for Australia) still standing perfectly when the new ones are falling down?

I know of one house down the road from me that is in a flood zone, and it looks quite funny to the unknowing. It's a really big house about 5m in the air with a massive staircase and nothing underneath. Looks funny in the dry, but come flood time they just pull out the small inflatable boat they keep in the storage closet and off they putt to get supplies.

This weather is in no way strange. People aren't happy and a bit shocked that it's happened but they don't really go out and complain about it and look for sympathy because everyone else is in the same predicament. And if your house isn't flooded then be prepared to provide shelter for 5-10 people, even if you don't know them. Plus we don't have looting or anything like that. There's just an unwritten rule, in Queensland anyway, that if there is a natural disaster then your enemies and strangers become friends and you go from house to house helping everyone. Then as soon as the floods gone everything goes back to normal and the crime rate goes back up. I guess that's one really good thing about natural disasters here.

It's law here when you are selling or leasing a house you must disclose whether it is in a natural disaster zone, most notably for floods. Do you have a similar thing in England?
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No - not really, but if you're clued up enough (and it does seem that many people aren't) you can check websites that show the areas all over the country that are in significantly high risk areas. Incidentally London is one of them what with being on the Thames. Last year there were three or four spring tides that coincided with weather patterns that caused a great deal of concern to the authorities. London only survives on the basis of a gamble that one of the 4 big spring tides that occurs over the winter doesn't coincide with a low pressure weather system in the North Sea. A 48 hour or more easterly wind off a deep low pressure system would hold a big tide in the river not letting the water out, each subsequent tide would cause a tidal surge. Two tidal surges would see London flood and hundreds of thousands of people affected and God knows how many dead if it happened in the depths of winter at night. Very few people are aware of it and it requires billion and billions of £'s worth of investment re-buidling defence systems. They're currently looking at ways of re-establising 'Salt marshes' along the estuary which would help absorb the flood and disipate the water over a vast area limiting the build up in the thames further up river. That's controversial though because all the re-claimed salt marsh is now good arable farm land with some communities on them - whole towns in some cases.
 
Boris said:
Do you normally get much rain where you are? Don't know any of the climate patterns over there.

Seems like WA is a pretty dry place though, only hear of the odd cyclone up North. If you ask me I'd prefer constant downpours to drought any day. Are you north or south?

I'll save you the scientific details of why, but where we are we get a lot of electrical storms. January/February normally sees one every week for about 5 weeks, and where we used to live was up high on a hill so you could just see the lightning everywhere, very frightening but rarely dangerous because they're predictable and you just go inside. The worst part is the sound, when you have 5-10 strikes within 20km of you the thunder cracks really start hurting your ears.

One time lightning struck a gate right next to the house and when we went out there afterwards to have a look we found that the chain we used to keep it closed was actually welded to the gate itself and a big scorch mark around it. Took me about a week to gain enough hearing back to hear everyone else's stories of that particularly bad storm :D

Anybody got some good storm tales?
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Yeah we had some big thunderstorms combined with ligtning in the early 1970's and a weird phenomenon called 'Ball lightning' which both me and my sister witnessed coming up the garden. In the same storm (and I can't remember whether the ball lighting was responsible), our cimmeney was blown to bits and totally destroyed. That was pretty scary. We have shed loads of Tornadoes here and I've witnessed a few - in fact we get more Tornadoes here than they do in the USA, but ours are a lot smaller and less damaging.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah we had some big thunderstorms combined with ligtning in the early 1970's and a weird phenomenon called 'Ball lightning' which both me and my sister witnessed coming up the garden. In the same storm (and I can't remember whether the ball lighting was responsible), our cimmeney was blown to bits and totally destroyed. That was pretty scary. We have shed loads of Tornadoes here and I've witnessed a few - in fact we get more Tornadoes here than they do in the USA, but ours are a lot smaller and less damaging.
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Yeah I've heard ball lightning, did some research in it as it interested me. Here in Australia it's a very, very rare find but there are a few areas in outback Queensland where it's possible. It's actually been one of the attempted explanations of the "Min Min Light". Look it up for further details but they are balls of light that appear to "follow people" and there are ghost stories of them leading kids off into the bush as they chase them, only for them to get lost. They were long thought a myth, as they are also a part of Aboriginal dream-time stories, but with the increase in technology there have been photos and videos and such taken of them and they are actually a real thing, although nobody has been able to explain them. Ball lightning is one theory, with the 'following' and such put down to it being sensationalised for a good ol' ghost story.

someblokecalleddave said:
No - not really, but if you're clued up enough (and it does seem that many people aren't) you can check websites that show the areas all over the country that are in significantly high risk areas. Incidentally London is one of them what with being on the Thames. Last year there were three or four spring tides that coincided with weather patterns that caused a great deal of concern to the authorities. London only survives on the basis of a gamble that one of the 4 big spring tides that occurs over the winter doesn't coincide with a low pressure weather system in the North Sea. A 48 hour or more easterly wind off a deep low pressure system would hold a big tide in the river not letting the water out, each subsequent tide would cause a tidal surge. Two tidal surges would see London flood and hundreds of thousands of people affected and God knows how many dead if it happened in the depths of winter at night. Very few people are aware of it and it requires billion and billions of £'s worth of investment re-buidling defence systems. They're currently looking at ways of re-establising 'Salt marshes' along the estuary which would help absorb the flood and disipate the water over a vast area limiting the build up in the thames further up river. That's controversial though because all the re-claimed salt marsh is now good arable farm land with some communities on them - whole towns in some cases.
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I've read a book about all the more likely disasters that could befall major cities around the world and I think I read something about this. Brisbane used to have a flood problem, as illustrated by the 1974 floods that practically flooded the entire city, and it wasn't raised as an issue by anybody, just caught everyone off guard. It was a massive flood, though, seen some of the pictures and being able to walk down the streets of Brisbane and look at some of the same buildings and notice that the water was over the roof of two story buildings and people being picked up on boats after climbing out a second story window is very hard to imagine, especially when you see how busy the streets are and just how many people were affected by it. The problem is fixed now as Wivenhoe Dam was built to supply the city with water and stop the flood threat (although there are people who say it could flow over and only make a 100 year flood worse, but it could just be scaremongering). London is four times bigger than Brisbane so I couldn't even begin to imagine the catastrophe it would be.
 
It appears I have my own little problem right here and now. The flooding from up north is happening down here now too. The strange thing with the place I live is that we don't even need rain here for it to flood us, it all depends how much rain there has been upstream in the catchment areas.
Here's the radar image for 5pm today, which is a split image of the radar image at 9am today, and dare I say, will be a split image of the radar tomorrow morning.
MaryFloodsJPEG.jpg

The red dot is where I live, the blue line is the Mary River (Fun fact: the Mary River is one of only two rivers that flow from south to north in the southern hemisphere. The other is The Nile :D), and the orange circle is the catchment area.

The Maleny/Conondale area, which is where the catchment is, has received 300mm in the past two days, to go along with our 150 already. The river is meant to get to a height of about 18 metres tomorrow which will effectively put the main street underwater. Everybody has spent the day moving their businesses up to high ground. It's really warming to see how many strangers come along to help, everyone here knows what these floods do so the community spirit is phenomenal.

My house isn't in a flood zone so I'm fine but seems like tomorrow I'm going to be doing some sandbagging. Normally takes 6-10 hours to flow downstream.

Oh, and sorry about the size of the picture, doesn't seem to change size no matter how much I shrink it?
 
Kram81 said:
Geez just some footage from the town Toowoomba this morning :eek: Hope you are going alright Boris.
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Yeah just about to post actually. We've gotten through fine, there's water in our backyard and the town's pretty much completely underwater but everyone got out fine and this town is always ready for a flood. Grant Denyer was in town here yesterday and televised on Sunrise if anyone happened to see it.

Spare a thought for those in Toowoomba, Esk and that region. They aren't ready for floods, they rarely get them. You don't see that sort of thing even in movies, scariest thing I have ever seen. We have friends down there who just missed it, it literally roared past their doorstep and the people next door have lost everything.

The water rose three metres in 8 minutes. It was like a dam burst or tsunami waters crashing inland. The water was just throwing cars around like toys, buildings just being swept away. And how about those three caught in their car discovered in the middle of the river that the new chopper found? Can't believe it.

I'm going down there tomorrow to help in the clean up, they need everyone they can get. Seven people have lost their lives so far with another 72 reported missing. Just astonishing.
 
Last week the town just 40kms to the north of where I live had a flash flood with 100mm+ of rain, waist deep water washing cars from the roads and houses and shops full of water and mud. Yet despite threatening clouds and plenty of thunder all morning we didn't get a single drop of rain just 25 minutes drive away. Very strange.
 
Kram81 said:
Boris seems to have completely disappeared from around here recently, hopefully he's going alright.
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Yeah you're right, last I heard of him he was heading out to see if he could help out in the floods (As above). I don't know how old he is, so have no idea of his responsibilities and comittments, but he may well be helping out with that still? I think he also said the flooding was quite near him as well, maybe the telecoms in his area have been affected?

With 3800 odd messages he's a valuable contributor to this forum and it wasn't usually a sentance, he was a bloke with some good suggestions and questions.
 
I'm back! (Are they groans I hear?)

I have quite a few stories to tell, but I'll save them up for another time.

For those who were wondering, everything's OK here, and thanks for caring.

We had flood water in our backyard but weren't effected directly. We have friends in Toowoomba and Esk so myself and some friends mostly from work went down there and helped in the clean up (we had nothing to do at work anyway). There were some pretty horrific sights down there and all I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't us.

I've been immersed with visitors in my house ranging from family to friends and even a couple of friends of friends who have either been inundated or cut off from their homes. My cousins who live in Emerald were in America at the time of the floods and came home to find they couldn't get into the town itself, and more relations in Toowoomba lost their entire house so I've had them living with me for a month and now they're back down there piecing things back together.

Then to make things worse cyclone Yasi hit and left a few friends up North with a massive repair bill and I went up there just after and helped clean up.

I figured that while I'm young and fit (well I am now, anyway!) that I should be helping as much as possible, and hopefully I'll get the same when I'm as old as some of the others I've seen with no house left.

Everybody else fair alright in the recent rounds of weird weather?
 
Boris said:
I'm back! (Are they groans I hear?)

I have quite a few stories to tell, but I'll save them up for another time.

For those who were wondering, everything's OK here, and thanks for caring.

We had flood water in our backyard but weren't effected directly. We have friends in Toowoomba and Esk so myself and some friends mostly from work went down there and helped in the clean up (we had nothing to do at work anyway). There were some pretty horrific sights down there and all I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't us.

I've been immersed with visitors in my house ranging from family to friends and even a couple of friends of friends who have either been inundated or cut off from their homes. My cousins who live in Emerald were in America at the time of the floods and came home to find they couldn't get into the town itself, and more relations in Toowoomba lost their entire house so I've had them living with me for a month and now they're back down there piecing things back together.

Then to make things worse cyclone Yasi hit and left a few friends up North with a massive repair bill and I went up there just after and helped clean up.

I figured that while I'm young and fit (well I am now, anyway!) that I should be helping as much as possible, and hopefully I'll get the same when I'm as old as some of the others I've seen with no house left.

Everybody else fair alright in the recent rounds of weird weather?
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Glad to hear you and your friends are alright albeit with some major problems, as long as you're all alive and well, the longer term should see a return to normality I hope?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Glad to hear you and your friends are alright albeit with some major problems, as long as you're all alive and well, the longer term should see a return to normality I hope?
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Well our town was pretty much completely underwater, but everybody here knows the drill and the buildings are built to withstand it. A week after the water was down all the shops were pretty much open again and almost all of the houses these days are out of flood areas or on massive stilts (looks strange when you drive past one in the dry, it's not till you see photos of floods do you understand why).

The other areas that aren't so prepared and used to it are going to take a couple of years to get back up and running. As an example there was still two towns recovering from Cyclone Larry, which was in 2006, and have now just been struck by floods and then Yasi straight after that, so they'll be down for a while.

The economy has been hit very hard as well, Queensland's going to be down for a while.

The one good point you can get out of these is the mateship that Australia still has, even in the bigger cities. Before the flood I was helping a friend move stuff out of his shop and over the course of three days I reckon about 10 complete strangers came through and helped, they just walked down the street to see who needed some. Also the way that property and boundaries no longer mattered, people would just turn up at your door and you'd give them what they want (if you could spare it, as all the shops were inevitably closed), and I know up north there were people sleeping anywhere and everywhere, in stranger's houses and in shelters provided if they could get there.

Does anybody know of any other Queenslanders on BC?
 
Boris said:
Well our town was pretty much completely underwater, but everybody here knows the drill and the buildings are built to withstand it. A week after the water was down all the shops were pretty much open again and almost all of the houses these days are out of flood areas or on massive stilts (looks strange when you drive past one in the dry, it's not till you see photos of floods do you understand why).

The other areas that aren't so prepared and used to it are going to take a couple of years to get back up and running. As an example there was still two towns recovering from Cyclone Larry, which was in 2006, and have now just been struck by floods and then Yasi straight after that, so they'll be down for a while.

The economy has been hit very hard as well, Queensland's going to be down for a while.

The one good point you can get out of these is the mateship that Australia still has, even in the bigger cities. Before the flood I was helping a friend move stuff out of his shop and over the course of three days I reckon about 10 complete strangers came through and helped, they just walked down the street to see who needed some. Also the way that property and boundaries no longer mattered, people would just turn up at your door and you'd give them what they want (if you could spare it, as all the shops were inevitably closed), and I know up north there were people sleeping anywhere and everywhere, in stranger's houses and in shelters provided if they could get there.

Does anybody know of any other Queenslanders on BC?
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There must be shedloads on here, or all those club threads all based in NSW and Victoria?
 
I would like to watch a test match at Perth. I have never seen a bouncy pitch, on which test cricket is played. But then, one can hardly see the delivery from the fast bowler, as it makes it's way to the batsman. I saw the first One Day International when Donald made his debut in Calcutta,(now Kolkata). That was the series which ended South Africa's long hiatus from international cricket. I only saw Donald go through his action from the stands. I never saw the delivery leave his hand, nor saw the delivery reach the batsman, or wicket-keeper. I remember a sports page headline on the eve of the match, on the Telegraph newspaper. It said, "Wessels, Cook Rice and Curry", a pun on the players of the South African team. The team players were Kepler Wessels, Jimmy Cook, Clive Rice, and I think, Norman Curry.
 
Boris said:
Well our town was pretty much completely underwater, but everybody here knows the drill and the buildings are built to withstand it. A week after the water was down all the shops were pretty much open again and almost all of the houses these days are out of flood areas or on massive stilts (looks strange when you drive past one in the dry, it's not till you see photos of floods do you understand why).

The other areas that aren't so prepared and used to it are going to take a couple of years to get back up and running. As an example there was still two towns recovering from Cyclone Larry, which was in 2006, and have now just been struck by floods and then Yasi straight after that, so they'll be down for a while.

The economy has been hit very hard as well, Queensland's going to be down for a while.

The one good point you can get out of these is the mateship that Australia still has, even in the bigger cities. Before the flood I was helping a friend move stuff out of his shop and over the course of three days I reckon about 10 complete strangers came through and helped, they just walked down the street to see who needed some. Also the way that property and boundaries no longer mattered, people would just turn up at your door and you'd give them what they want (if you could spare it, as all the shops were inevitably closed), and I know up north there were people sleeping anywhere and everywhere, in stranger's houses and in shelters provided if they could get there.

Does anybody know of any other Queenslanders on BC?
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Yeah the bloke that goes by the name of Mystichael or something, he started the screwball thread I think.
 
Yeah most of those club members are from Victoria, cricket in Queensland isn't quite as big on a fanatical level, lots of players just not lots of players so interested in the game they'd join a forum. Many Victorians would argue most Queenslanders wouldn't know how to use a computer. There are a couple of areas such as Logan that have the sort of reputation of maybe Liverpool I think has, as far as I can recall from England.
 
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